Our Freedom – v2.0
POST 1195
Preface
This is the second in a series examining the state of our freedom. Link to the first installment here.
What About Our Welfare?
Not so-called entitlement programs. This is about our general welfare, like NOAA, NWS and FEMA and how they work to enhance our safety – our welfare. It’s based on what has been discussed in the press about what was done in advance of the tsunami in the Guadalupe River that swept away hundreds of people, including those kids in the summer camps along the river.
This is not the first time that such massive flooding has happened in Kerr County. The folks in charge of monitoring and warning saw the massive storms approaching and they knew what would happen in hill country, as massive amounts of rain water flowed downhill to the river. So,
Question #1:
Radio alerts were sounded, but there was no siren, no audible alert. An audible alert system was scratched in this hyper-conservative county many times, even if it were funded by the federal government and not local property taxes because, as one resident put it, “. . . send this money back to the Biden administration, which I consider to be the most criminal treasonous communist government ever to hold the White House . . . ” Naturally, such folks don’t want to fund an emergency alert system through taxes on themselves – like for the common good. See this for details.
As of this writing at least 134 people are confirmed dead and about 97 are still missing. If it turns out that all the missing have died, that’s 231 people dead from the flood. The warning system those Texans refused would have cost about $1 million, so it appears that these hyper-conservative locals and Gov. Greg Abbott decided that those lives were worth just $4,329 each and not one cent more. Extremist ideology comes at a cost.
Question #2:
Why weren’t there people riding the road along the river, calling out a warning to all those summer camps of kids, to residents, to hikers and campers, Paul Revere-like, warning them to evacuate and get to high ground immediately?
We know that there was precious little time to accomplish the warning – perhaps just 3 hours – but people in pickup trucks or on horseback could have carried the warning to many who were not able to receive a radio or cell phone alert – assuming such alerts were sounded. Where were those guys? Why weren’t they organized for such an emergency?
Question #3:
Two of the top weather guys took early retirement due to insane pressure from DOGE. Consequently, they were unavailable during the run-up to the flood and no one took their places, so the best skills were missing from the extreme weather warning toolbox. How did that expertise gap hamper efforts to protect people along the river? That’s being examined now.
FEMA funds were already cut and no FEMA people were pre-positioned to provide quick support. I fact, it took until three days after the initial flooding for FEMA to show up. They weren’t even reliably answering their phones due to the shortage of personnel. Way to go, DOGE!
Question #4 – an aggregation:
Are Trump and Musk proud as can be for saving of the salaries of those weather and FEMA experts? Was this a major victory in their brain-free battle against largely non-existent waste, fraud and abuse? Now that they’ve significantly de-funded FEMA, will the effort to find the remaining victims of the flood be truncated, bodies left to decay in the flood debris, loved ones left in a hellish void?
Question #5:
The Preamble to the Constitution speaks to the purpose of that document and of government itself. One of the duties of government is to “promote the general Welfare.” How are we doing at that? And what does that say about our freedom?
Recall that in a time of great fear and constant want, FDR laid out the Four Freedoms:
1. Freedom of speech and expression
2. Freedom of worship
3. Freedom from want
4. Freedom from fear
So, here’s Question #6:
Given the terrifying nature of that flooded river, of our more powerful and more frequent hurricanes and tornadoes, of mass incarceration of wholly innocent people and the intimidation of our entire society, how are we doing on the Freedom from fear part?
Freedom is a demanding thing. It’s a high bar to clear and we all know that we must be vigilant to keep our freedom secure. At least, those of us who aren’t fascists and who aren’t willing to be subjugated by a dictator – we know that. And we know that our freedom is under continuous and dangerous attack.
What About Freedom From Dictatorship – as in: Freedom To be Free?
From the Heather Cox Richardson post of July 7:
As Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol pointed out in Talking Points Memo, it appears that officials in the Trump administration are using immigration as a way to establish a police state. Indeed, they are using the concept that presidents have control of foreign affairs as a way to work around the laws in place to prevent a dictatorship. [emphasis mine]
In her July 9 post she quoted Sen. Edward Kennedy in his 1987 opposition to the Robert Bork nomination to the Supreme Court.
“Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, [B]lacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy….”
Too much of that 1987 warning feels frighteningly like today. Indeed, we’re being Borked regularly by the ultra-right, ideologue Supreme Court six.
If Trump gets away with establishing a police state, what do you suppose will happen to our next election? What will have happened to our freedom then?
The Deconstructing Trump* Corner
.
- A bad cause will ever be supported
- by bad means and bad men.
- Thomas Paine, 1777
- Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.
- Frank Leahy, 1955
- _________________________________________
* Deconstructing Trump by Mardy Grothe explores The Trump phenomenon through the lens of quotation history.
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